Browse through most seed shops today and the regular section is the shelf at the back: smaller every year, marked cheaper than the feminized packs next to it, and bought by a dwindling group of people who know exactly what they are looking for. It is tempting to read that as the end of a technology. It is nearer to the truth to see it as a library losing shelves while the bookshop next door expands. Every feminized line began as a regular one, every new cross needs a male at some point in its pedigree, and the breadth of cannabis genetics that survives at all exists because someone kept regular seed. Dedicated sellers such as https://breederregularseeds.com stock lines that trace to the 1980s, sold in packs of 10 seeds because a pack is intended to be a population, not a one plant. This article sets out the case for that unfashionable pack: what the male is for, what a grower gives up by never growing one, and how to get value with a population instead of a clone.

The Other Half of the Genome

The lazy description of a male cannabis plant is “the one that makes pollen”, and for a flower grower that is all it. To a breeder it is half the genome of every seed that follows, and half is selected with the same care as the mother.

A male contributes growth habit, vigour, flowering time, tolerance to mould and pests, trichome production and the aromatic profile just as the female does; it simply shows some of those qualities less visibly since it does not produce a finished flower. Those who work with regular seed invest as much time choosing males as females, and this is the work that a feminized cross inherits and cannot replicate. Feminizing a female yields pollen; it cannot provide a second set of selected traits.

How Diversity Leaks Away

A great deal of the feminized market is made from S1 seeds: a single famous clone, treated and crossed with itself. Each round of that selfing halves the surviving genetic variation, and after a couple of generations what remains is essentially one plant repeated in slightly different ways.

That is fine for a consumer who wants that one plant. It is a problem for everyone who comes after. Hidden weaknesses surface: intersex tendencies, brittle stems, susceptibility to one particular mould. Traits that were present in the original line but absent in the selected clone disappear from the gene pool altogether. A generation of such breeding leaves a market crowded with versions of a dozen plants, and a breeder wanting to make something different finds there is little remaining to cross. Regular seed from an outcrossed line is the store that replenishes the pool, and that reservoir only exists as long as somebody keep growing it.

Reading a Male Plant

Guides on choosing females are everywhere; guidance on picking males is scarce, since most growers never keep one past the first week of flower to judge. For anyone making seed, these are the marks breeders watch for.

• Timing. A male that declares sex first and flowers at the same pace as the females is far more workable than an early one that releases pollen before the female is ready.
• Resin on the stem. Scratch a stem or a pollen sac and smell it. A male with resin on its flower parts and a strong scent suggests it carries the terpene traits that are worth keeping.
• Stability. Any male that at the same time shows female flowers under normal stress is discarded outright; that trait is the one thing anyone wants breeding forward.
• Structure. Tight internodes, a strong main stem and a frame that resembles the intended female shape are inherited; a lanky, weak-stemmed male passes that down too.
• Restraint. Males that dump enormous quantities of pollen all at once are frequently the less desirable genetically; many breeders prefer moderate shedders.

What 10 Seeds Actually Give You

The mistake first-time regular-seed buyers fall into is treating a pack as 10 chances at the one plant. It is the opposite. A pack from a real outcrossed line is a sample of a population, and the value of running it is to see the range and choose from it.

Roughly half the plants will be male, which means a pack of 10 seeds yields around five females to compare and five males to discard or judge for breeding. Within the females, look for real variation: height, flowering time, aroma, bud structure, tolerance. This variation is not a flaw in the seed; it is what the seed is for. The grower who takes cuttings from the best female and the best male now owns something a feminized pack cannot offer: a pair of chosen parents which are theirs.

Making Your Own Seed

Holding selected parents means producing the next generation, and there the choices multiply. The main approaches account for most of what small-scale breeders attempt.

• Backcross. Take a selected seedling again to one of its parents to lock in a specific trait. It narrows the range quickly and is useful when a single parent has something worth concentrating and the second contributed mostly vigour.
• Selected cross. One chosen male on one or several chosen females, everything else removed. The offspring inherit the traits of two specific plants and express narrower spread than the original pack. Done over generations with consistent choices, this is how a stable line is made.
• Open pollination. Allow every male pollinate every female. It preserves the full diversity of the line, produces a generous volume of seed, and does no choosing at all. This is how traditional lines are kept alive, and it is the right method when the goal is preservation rather than refinement.

All three require nothing more than a isolated space for the male, a soft brush or a paper bag, and patience. None of them needs the chemical treatment that feminized production does.

Keeping Old Lines Alive

A number of lines have never feminized and probably never will be: landraces gathered from regions where cannabis grew over centuries, and old crosses from the early decades of modern breeding. They are sold as regular seed because the people keeping them treat the population as the entire value, and reversing a single clone would destroy precisely what makes the line worth preserving.

Running a landrace from regular seed is different from running a commercial hybrid. There will be wide variation, long flowering periods in equatorial lines, lanky plants, and qualities that made sense in a mountain valley but not under a small room. Expect too flavours and chemistry that do not appear in the hybrid market anywhere. Breeder Regular Seeds keeps a separate landrace and heirloom section, and each line labelled with its origin of collection and the number of generations it has been reproduced from the original collection.

The Honest Exclusions

None of the above turns regular seed the best option for everyone, and claiming otherwise would the product no favours.

A grower with space for three plants who wants each one of them to flower is far better off with feminized seed. So is anyone unable to inspect the plants every day during the onset of flower, because a late male in a confined space ruins everything inside days. A person running a single autoflower on a balcony has no value from a population they cannot select from. And anyone who wants a known clone-only plant reproduced exactly is looking for a feminized S1, not a regular cross. Regular seed is for the grower who wants to select, to keep and eventually to produce something new; for everyone else the back shelf is best left alone.

Before You Buy

Breeder Regular Seeds dispatches every order in unmarked parcels with the original packs intact inside and nothing on the outside to reveal the contents. Orders to the United States are not taken, because seed importation is restricted there. Seed law differs sharply by country: in a good number of places owning seeds is lawful as genetic preservation while germinating them is not, and in others the two are allowed under licence or neither is. Checking the position where you live is the buyer’s responsibility, and no part of this article is legal advice.